Texas Tech alumnus, entrepreneur remembered for doing things the right way

Jennifer Marley, his wife, said the family coined a new phrase to characterize the way her late husband ran his life: the Marley Way.

“He came from nothing, a very underprivileged background and basically built a small empire,” Jennifer said.

Mark died Thursday after a battle with cancer at 51.

Born and raised in Crosbyton, Mark showed an early desire to own a seed company.

Donnie Swink, Mark’s boss at Crosbyton Seed while Mark was in high school and college, said it was apparent Mark had a desire to get into the seed business.

“He was a little boy when he started working around it, and he just fell in love with it,” Swink said. “He went off to school to be an (agriculture) teacher, and he came back to it.”

Mark attended Texas Tech with the intention of being an agriculture teacher, Swink said, teaching for one year at Kress High School north or Plainview.

But the love for the seed industry pulled him back, and Mark went to work at another seed company.

Jennifer said Mark told her on their first date that he wanted to one day own his own seed company.

In 1989, he founded Production Plus Seed, which at one point was one of the leaders of the seed industry, Swink said, specializing in Sorghum Sudangrass.

But Mark was always actively involved in more aspects of the agriculture world. While at school, Mark was president of the Texas Tech Future Farmers of America — an organization he was actively involved in during high school.

Mark’s high school agriculture teacher, Roger Green, stayed close to Mark after the future seed man graduated from college.

Green, now a teacher at Monterey High School, recalled one of Mark’s passions was helping some of the FFA youth.

“There’s no telling how many kids he sponsored,” Green said, adding Mark wanted youths to have opportunities he did not, especially when raising livestock.

Swink also spoke on Mark’s generosity, and he characterized the Marley Way as doing things the right way.

“He was just always thinking,” Swink said. “He was always planning everything he did as if he sold it, it needs to be useable for somebody else.”

Swink said Mark’s children — Dallas, Zach and Jaci — were taught the right way to do things.

Jennifer said Mark was enthusiastic about collecting southwestern art, guns and baseball cards.

At one point, Mark brought his card collection to a local shop to sell, and the owner told Mark he could open his own store with everything he had.

A testament to Mark’s mindset of doing things the right way might have been his Marley Mobile Rolling Kitchen, which is a grill built on a cotton-trailer chassis, Jennifer said.

He could cook hundreds of hamburgers and steaks, and dozens of slabs of brisket at a single time, which he did for a bevy of local organizations, including the American Cancer Society’s Cotton Baron’s Ball and Relay for Life.

Last year, as almost a culmination of a life of hard work and giving, Mark was honored by his alma mater as a distinguished alumnus for the College of Agriculture.

Mark didn’t only stick to the seed business, though, and he ventured out into construction, ranching and even stock trading, Jennifer said.

“It was a new world every day living with him,” she said. “He constantly had ideas and constantly had new business ideas. He had a plan for everything.”